AWeber is pretty close-lipped about their security measures; while there is a very short section on security in the company’s privacy policy inviting readers to contact the company for details, I did precisely that and was simply told they couldn’t discuss security measures for security reasons. (I find the argument unconvincing, given the basic security information freely available on competitors’ sites.)
Since finding your great IM teachings and fantastic products I can honestly say my business has been taken to the next level. My lists are growing faster than I ever imagined possible! I now feel - no - I now know - I have a real online business – thanks to you I have access to fantastic products. Every week you seem to release a new product – which is great for me I will never be short of products to promote. I would like to thank you for this Golden opportunity - I totally believe if I can’t make money online now there is something seriously wrong with me! - David Knight
The TRIBE Breakfast Series will explore what drives mission-based challenger brands. We want to bring together a group of challenger brands and marketing and PR professionals at TRIBE HQ, to share ideas and hear from a number of inspiring voices, so we can learn how to discover and articulate our purpose and better connect with our tribes. All over a (free) delicious, healthy breakfast; granola yoghurt pots, pastries and TRIBE breakfast Shakes.
As a total beginner to all of this, there is a serious “learning curve” in just getting to this point. If all I want to do is create a mailing list – why do i have to have a third party mailing service if I use yahoo or gmail? Does this mean that I have to sign up with mailchimp or aweber? I find this all a bit confusing as to why i need to do this at all? and then what happens if in the future, i want to add this feature? right now i have no budget to pay additional fee-services, so it is just not an option. I find navigating all of this extremely confusing as a first time user of WP and setting up a site. Many of the plugins break my site and cause serious problems, so i am very leery on downloading additional plugins. most of them have 4-5 – star ratings but only have a few comments that created that rating. If you could consider taking one (or two) step(s) back and try to explain on a more basic level – i think that would really help beginners. I am finding all of this social media, feedburner, etc to be extremely time consuming and the blog comments i am getting are ALL advertisers, so I have marked them as spam and deleted them without displaying on my site.
I spoke with an Infusionsoft Certified Partner I met at PartnerCON to discuss my wish to migrate my list. An ICP is someone who becomes Infusionsoft Certified after passing a rigorous test at the end of a four-day training course at Infusionsoft’s headquarters. An ICP understands Infusionsoft inside and out and is able to include Infusionsoft services in their client packages.
Great guide, just what I was looking for but it is timing that is my question. I have just got my ecommerce website up and running selling “print on demand” (small run personalised printing) products. Have only a few items for sale so when should I try to create my email list.? Is 15 items in a shop too small so wait until I have say 50? Create a landing page that promises more in the future so sign up now? Not an easy one to find advise on. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Of course, you probably already know that Aweber has been around since 1998, that’s like a million years in internet time that is, lol. They are located in Chalfont, PA which is fairly close to Philadelphia. So you know when you are working with them you are literally working with the best in the industry. Because really, how would they have survived this long if their product is crap?
Pricing for InfusionSoft is also fairly different than AWeber. The interesting thing I discovered is that a lot of people—at least people who I spoke with—are hesitant to share how much they are billed. No one would tell me upfront, which led me to believe that Infusionsoft pricing depends on who you spoke with and what kind of deal you could get, and I was right.
I wasn’t sharing my affiliate link for ConvertKit (but I am now – I earn a commission if you buy with this link) as this move was happening because I wanted to take a couple of months to really test it out. After using it for more than three months now, however, I’m extremely happy with the results and am confident in my recommendation. Please note that I do receive a commission from the affiliate links to ConvertKit that are on this page. [Full Disclosure: I’m a compensated advisor and an affiliate for ConvertKit.]
Upon signing up there’s a skippable introductory video. AWeber has a bit more of a setup procedure than most ESPs; to get started, you’ll need to fill out information including the business address you want to feature on the bottom of emails, as well as any customizations you want to make to AWeber’s standard opt-in confirmation message. Once you’ve finished those basic configurations, you’ll be free to explore the program.
But really, the conversation was just a series of questions about my needs, my experiences wants and desires as a blogger, podcaster, and digital marketer. Having just completed a software product of my own (The Smart Podcast Player), I appreciated the questions and fully understood what he wanted, and I was not afraid to hold back. He was my friend, and plus what if he created the perfect solution for me.
Let me say right out of the gate, that I would still recommend Aweber to business owners. It’s a great solution and is well regarded in the industry, particularly for their rigour of asking for the double opt-in to minimize spammers and assure permission (this is where a subscriber has to confirm via email that they do in fact want to receive information). It’s reasonably priced, and has many of the basic features needed to do good email marketing. MailChimp is comparable too – however, despite my love for their awesome branding, it lacks features that even Aweber has down. It’s great for a basic business owner.
AWeber finds a healthy balance between ease of use and robust functionality. There are some nice features — particularly in the autoresponder realm — but navigation is intuitive enough that I was able to perform basic tasks without looking up tutorials. When I did find myself at a loss and turned to the online help resources, I was quite impressed with the range and scope of guidance available.
Hi Harsh sir, you have described all aspects very nicely. I am working with an email marketing company and we use the shared servers to send mails in bulk. But the methods of ESP’s like you have mentioned here can make good revenue i guess. I am planning to start affiliate marketing by my own. But lacking with some knowledge as i am beginner, so please guide me with the best articles or some sort of reading materials. Thank you

If you’d like to check out ConvertKit, my referral link is here [Full Disclosure: I’m a compensated advisor and an affiliate for ConvertKit], and if you have any questions about ConvertKit, both Nathan and I will be actively popping in and out of this post to reply, however we’re currently at the LeadPages conference in Minneapolis so we may be slow to reply at first.

Aweber I had used it too. You know the double opt in asking the already subscribed subscribers to confirm again was a great put off for me. In real cases, you could lose about 30% of your subscribers just due to this double opt in required. Trust me if i had subscribed earlier and again a subscription request comes, its a real put off for me as a reader.
I suppose the secondary reason I haven’t made the switch is because I run multiple blogs and don’t want to get stuck paying multiple fees at this point. (I’m under the impression I’d have to pay separately for each email list, but please correct me if that’s not the case. That would change things.) I love the functionality and features of Aweber, but I can’t see paying 4-5 monthly services fees while so many of the blogs are in a start-up phase.

Before ConvertKit came on my radar, I was considering making the switch to Ontraport or Infusionsoft. I was ready for a more robust solution that Aweber just didn’t offer. But after years of hearing people call it “Confusionsoft” and the prospect of shelling out big bucks (at least $200+/month plus hefty $1000+ start-up fee) to use 20% of its features, I wasn’t super excited about making the switch. Ontraport had some promising options, and one of my clients started using them and was happy (though she did hire an Ontraport consultant and strategist to come in and get it all up and running).

The fundamental idea is to give people something that aligns with the type of subscriber you seek. For example, if you wish to have a list of SciFi readers, a free SFF short story, book, or character dossier would be very appetizing to the sort of people you wish to attract. It can’t be something they can get from anywhere (like an Amazon gift card) but instead something genuine that you have created.
For example, if a particular subscriber’s message number is 4, that means that that subscriber has already received follow-up emails 1,2 and 3. So if I have a 7 part follow up message sequence and I write a brand new followup email (message 8 in the sequence), there is no real way for me to prevent this subscriber from receiving message 8 unless I make his or her message number higher than 8. But if I do this, then that subscriber will never receive messages 4,5,6 or 7.
Remember the article I wrote on increasing conversions where we talked about the Blue-Shirt Trust your blog needs in order to capture email subscribers and appear reliable? Well Aweber can help you with that. They have hundreds of free web forms that you can copy and paste right in to your blog’s code. They even have a web form creator (pictured above) where you can play around with colors, shapes and logos.
Slide in form – This is a less invasive form than a pop up, but still helps capture your visitors’ attention when they are scrolling through your content. As they make their way through your content, a slide-in form will appear about 3/4 down the page. This is the perfect time to get people who are engaging with your content to sign up for your list.
Thank you for a detailed comparison of MailChimp and Aweber. I think it’s a nice idea to also have an in-house email software like this one http://easymail7.com in addition to the account with a remotely hosted email provider like MailChimp or Aweber. In case of a sudden account suspension by the ESP, you would not lose contacts, emails, autoresponders etc, and would be able to continue email marketing using the in-house email software.
One of the best feature of Aweber eMail form creator is, you can have extra field apart from Name and eMail. For example, if you need to get the Address or Phone number from your subscribe, you can do that by adding a new field. (The step is easy to do and even with zero design and coding skills you can do that). What I suggest is, simply select any template from the page and you are good to add Aweber sign-up form on your blog.
You need to add few details like, Name of your list, Sender name for the list, reply-to email, default subject and few more details. Most of the fields are self-explanatory, so you will not find yourself lost at any moment. There are few fields which are mandatory, for example, Address of your company (In the case of bloggers, you can add your home address). You can leave the default subject field empty, as this will be used when you are sending your first email campaign.
After paying a professional $1000 to split test our first product launch, we knew the practice was a solid investment as our sales increased dramatically. But for our recent Keyword Supremacy launch, we decided to test out Split Test monkey to see if we could somehow pull off split testing our live traffic ourselves and… “All We Have to Say Now is WOW!”
Pricing for InfusionSoft is also fairly different than AWeber. The interesting thing I discovered is that a lot of people—at least people who I spoke with—are hesitant to share how much they are billed. No one would tell me upfront, which led me to believe that Infusionsoft pricing depends on who you spoke with and what kind of deal you could get, and I was right.
The usability of most of the site is actually not bad; I even like the design look and feel. However, the signup process is where I had (and am still having) trouble with. Just simply getting a reply from them on anything takes hours and hours, but when you look search usability and mailchimp.com, they are all kinds of busy writing blogs about their mobile usability testing and how great they are. So they are so focused on their mobile they forgot that the #1 focus should be getting new users fast, and keeping them with good support… what a JOKE! Mailchimp.com is usability and customer support FAIL!

MailChimp always tempts me in terms of design and looks, and more over they keep adding new features, which will be helpful in your Email marketing campaign. The Best thing about MailChimp is, it’s free for first 2000 subscribers, and you will not be charged anything until you have crossed their free limit. This is useful for bloggers, who are worried about moving from Feedburner to another paid Email marketing services, as with free you have nothing to lose.

Thanks again for another fine quality product. I have been a member of quite a few of your email lists and have purchased a lot of your products also. One thing I can say is they all are very thorough, informative and you over deliver. I have dealt with a lot of online marketers but there are very few like you who deliver such value and so quick to respond to e-mails. You are someone I know I can trust and that is very important in this business. Thanks again and hope to be able to meet you someday. - Rick Sorrels
We understand how overwhelming and confusing this could be for a new user. But you will soon find out how useful it would be for you in the future. We would recommend you not to cover every thing quickly. Focus on building your site, bringing visitors, posting content. When you are stuck at something, focus on that specific problem and try to solve it using tutorials on our site or else where.
Even my team members, who are much smarter than I am, couldn’t get a grasp of it as quickly as I wanted them to. Although the help I hired was amazing, that company wasn’t a part of Team Flynn like my other teammates. They would never think to change things here and there on their own for the benefit of the brand and what it stands for, because that’s not what they’re paid to do.
Please do not think that I am advising anyone to move away from AWeber. Nor am I saying that they are not reliable and don’t deserve their respected reputation in the industry. After all, many top bloggers do use AWeber on their sites. Have done for many years and continue to do so. I would still encourage anyone who is more patient, and more technically inclined to give AWeber a try. I think their reliability and service will not disappoint.
I have worked with several other product protection and delivery systems, and have had to code my own fixes time and time again, or worse yet have my valuable assets exposed! ProductDyno comes out of the box ready to secure and support your products and customers, wither it be an information product, a SaaS product,… “Product Protection is ProductDyno”
One of the challenges I’ve had with email marketing is figuring out exactly what to offer and when. I’ve tried the pretty HTML newsletter, but it felt like overkill at times and a little dated (there are of course a few awesome ones out there, but it just never felt like me). I tried taking an ‘e-letter’ approach but felt overwhelmed with creating original content for the newsletter on top of the blog. And more recently, I’ve simply been sending out broadcasts when a new blog or podcast is published. And this is all fine.

Our 21st most-read story in 2018: America’s food safety system has a gaping hole: Growers aren’t required to test their irrigation water for pathogens such as E. coli. Congress ordered a fix in 2011. But Trump’s FDA shelved the rules. https://www.revealnews.org/article/5-people-died-from-eating-lettuce-but-trumps-fda-still-wont-make-farms-test-water-for-bacteria/?utm_source=Reveal&utm_medium=social_media&utm_campaign=twitter …

Global Text Snippets can help cut down on this. It answers the “How did I get on this list?” question that pops into their head when they receive an “unfamiliar” email – even if it’s a list they subscribed to. So when you compose an email to send out to your subscribers about an offer that may be spread across several sites, you can say something like:
I know that this is ancient, but I just made the switch to MailChimp due to a theme change (the theme uses shortcodes which WordPress eats for breakfast) I’d sent out one e-mail with MailChimp, and my second blog post got killed. I blog about re-selling crap I buy from garage sales, thrift stores, and flea markets on eBay. I actually have a blog post titled “work from home – not yet!” detailing why I’m not able to work from home. The hard part for me is that I don’t make enough money on the blog to justify using Awebr. If this is the way it’s going to go, I’m going to need to re-evaluate my blog, what I want to do with it, and whether I should make the switch to a much more expensive option. Not surprising that someone else has had a similar experience though.
Just what I needed to learn how to promote my own products! The products, sales letter, auto responder sequences, available help, are all super important for a newbie like myself. Hey, I can even use the products for my own education. The graphics are unbelievable. This program is worth its weight in gold. Everything is clearly explained! - Joseph Daniels
We are super excited to be join...ed by James Fairbank, Marketing Director at Rapha for the next TRIBE Breakfast Series event. James will be talking about the history of the UK's most iconic cycling brand and the role that has been played by the Rapha community in it's amazing growth. Founded in 2004 by Simon Mottram, Rapha creates the finest cycling clothing and accessories in the world. Rapha Cycle Clubs launched in 2012 and there are now 22 clubhouses in 13 countries. They work with the best athletes and designers, and strive to perfect any adventure on the bike, whether it’s the shortest ride or the longest race.I have applied much of my knowledge of digital and online marketing. But I also continue to stay busy learning new ways to make money online. Even as I’m writing this I’m also testing and tweaking three additional tactics. So the process is never finished and we grind on a daily basis. Each challenge is an opportunity to learn and improve for the next round.
Even if you've imported an existing list of contacts, you'll still want an easy way for new fans to join your email list. AWeber's sign up forms provide the perfect solution. Create a simple sign up form for your website, and if you don't have a site, we'll host it for you. Grab the link to your AWeber form and share it on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or wherever your audience is.